A while back, the Pittsburgh Steelers presented wide receiver Mike Wallace with a one-year contract tender. But he still has no plans to sign it. So said ESPN's Adam Schefter on Wednesday. Schefter also said that if Wallace doesn't get a new deal before OTAs commence, he'll sit them out. The tender would pay Wallace $2.742 million this season. He is coming off a year in which he caught 72 passes for 1,193 yards and eight touchdowns.

BTW, signing a tender would mean Wally could conceivably paint himself into a corner, as in a 1-year deal for less average than he could make on a longer-term deal... if a longer-term deal is worked out, great, if not and he becomes UFA then he gets a better deal too. So where's the wienie? Where's the incentive to sign?

The only incentive to sign I can think of would be that he's currently unemployed, he has no contract and no income but is still controlled by the Steelers. If he has half a brain he'll eventually sign the tender, play out the year and then he's a UFA. Or as you say, continue to negotiate. But for now he's an RFA sans a contract.

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"I like David Bowie, he was always my favorite member of Tin Machine."- Rodney Anonymous

Plus, given the fact that he received no offers in the open market doesn't put him in a position of strength. He won't get Megatron Money. Best to accept that and get over it. Maybe he would as a UFA though. If that's what he believes then it would behoove him to sign the tender and go forward with his last year as a Steeler. But they haven't done that so I tend to agree that they continue to negotiate. Besides, the deadline for teams to sign UFAs is 4/20 so that's when we'll know something beyond Scheftulation (wild indeterminate speculation).

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"I like David Bowie, he was always my favorite member of Tin Machine."- Rodney Anonymous

I agree, the fact that no one has offered him a contract actually gives him less pull. Hopefully there is some work being done behind the scenes and he's not just whining like a diva or whining because he thought he could get diva type cash and was denied leaguewide.

I think he's a great receiver obviously and fits great but no one wants another Holmes like entitlement attitude in the locker room.

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"If you make every game a life and death proposition, you're going to have problems. For one thing, you'll be dead a lot."

Pittsburgh would be extremely wise to play hard ball with him. I'm sure they can dig up a pair of Staley greys in his size.

Let him sit. He makes nothing. He doesn't practice. He doesn't play. He gets a year older.

And, next season he'll be a RFA again. He'll also get a front row seat to the Antonio Brown long term deal negotiations. Maybe he'll even get a front row seat at the press conference when they announce it.

When Mike Wallace became a restricted free agent, his camp tried to spread the message that teams would be lining up to sign him because it would only take a first-round pick in compensation under the new CBA.

That didn’t work, but they aren’t through trying to get Wallace more money than he’s set to be paid under the tender placed on him by the Steelers earlier in the offseason. Mark Kaboly of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reports that a handful of teams are interested in making a trade for the disgruntled wideout and, as Kaboly points out, this is the next stage in Wallace’s strategy to get a big new contract.

Via a trade, teams could land Wallace without giving up a first-round pick while Wallace would still be able to get the long-term deal that he hasn’t been able to get from the Steelers. By making it known that he won’t sign his tender, Wallace is signaling that he’ll be a thorn in the side of the Steelers and that it might just be better for them to get what they can for him now than deal with the headaches before he leaves as an unrestricted free agent after the 2012 season. That outcome seems likely given the tenor of negotiations thus far and the hints sent by Wallace’s camp about how much he’d like to be paid.

The Steelers made a somewhat similar deal with Santonio Holmes before the 2010 Draft. Holmes had off-field issues, but, like Wallace, Holmes was entering the final year before unrestricted free agency when the Steelers dealt him for a fifth-round pick. Whether or not they would be willing to part with Wallace is unclear, although it is preferable to get something for him instead of watching him leave for nothing as a free agent a year from now.